It just seems that the whole sorry affair was based on pretty thin evidence right from the start. Then the way it was handled by the Crown lawyers, PMO, and the Executive suite at 101 would make even Groucho Marx gasp at the ineptitude.
I am no longer current with how much a Crown can be influenced politically - here as DA's are elected, you can usually be sure that they don't care what someone says to them, but what is good for re-election with the public...
Well we had a justice minister who was fired because she wouldn't listen to the direction from the PMO. So there's that.I am no longer current with how much a Crown can be influenced politically - here as DA's are elected, you can usually be sure that they don't care what someone says to them, but what is good for re-election with the public...
It seems to be a rather ridiculous fishing expedition from the outside looking up at y'all
Just to clarify, Brandon University has no faculty of law and if it did, why would you assume it would be low rate?
Being a graduate of the "Number 1 University in Western Manitoba" I can toss shade at that illustrious institution. They let me graduate! LOL!Just to clarify, Brandon University has no faculty of law and if it did, why would you assume it would be low rate?
Asking for my friends in Brandon.
I only went there for some pre-law extension courses (Politics and Propaganda in the Cinema with Skinner) but did my law at UofM.
I was there from 85 to 88. Yep we had quite a bunch of ringers from the Carolina's that Hemmings brought up. I spent most of my time chasing skirts in the English department, talking history with the profs, and chasing more skirts at the Unwinder. Good times!
BU did have a really good basketball team there in the mid Eighties when I got there and Jerry Hemmings was coaching. That was my regular form of live sports entertainment during the winter months.
Made me think of my first Bobcat game and seeing Joey Vickery on the court. Said to myself, what's a 5'10" white kid from Winnipeg doing playing point guard? Then I watched him sink eight three-pointers.
Makes sense.Made me think of my first Bobcat game and seeing Joey Vickery on the court. Said to myself, what's a 5'10" white kid from Winnipeg doing playing point guard? Then I watched him sink eight three-pointers.
Anyway. To get back to the trial. The problem is that crown attorneys are generally your middle of the road folks with a few stars and a large bunch of time-clock-punchers. Defence attorneys on the other hand are more stratified into those that go at it with high skill and a passion and earn the big bucks and a herd of guys who chase around remand courts doing the scutt work that keeps the system moving. High profile case like these bring out the defence stars and it shows.
Not a clue. Based on the evidence given yesterday (as reported) I said to myself "why was this guy a prosecution witness?" he didn't implicate anyone and it didn't strike me that he was laying a base for evidence to come. But you never know with newspaper articles. They frequently do not see the subtleties of the evidence.
Just for a bit of insight, Crown can pretty much always withdraw charges or stay the proceedings if they choose. If that’s done there really isn’t a way for defense to force the matter to continue through airing of the charges.
They happen at all levels but unfortunately many people do not have the resources to fight
Yes it appears that crown attorneys often work under the same conditions/assumptions that public defenders do in an American legal dramaMade me think of my first Bobcat game and seeing Joey Vickery on the court. Said to myself, what's a 5'10" white kid from Winnipeg doing playing point guard? Then I watched him sink eight three-pointers.
Anyway. To get back to the trial. The problem is that crown attorneys are generally your middle of the road folks with a few stars and a large bunch of time-clock-punchers. Defence attorneys on the other hand are more stratified into those that go at it with high skill and a passion and earn the big bucks and a herd of guys who chase around remand courts doing the scutt work that keeps the system moving. High profile case like these bring out the defence stars and it shows.
By “paper trail” do you mean the CBC reporter who did an investigation into the origins of the arrangement, then who stopped being a reporter after becoming a political staff member policy advisor to the Minister of National Defence, but who was never implicated by the very government that hired him as an Exempt PS employee in the service of the Minister?
Funny how the Duffy affair was in play in the subsequent election (I forget how much) but the Norman affair absolutely disappeared.
My understanding the Duffy situation was that it was mostly a matter of the senate’s own rules being so poorly laid out that they proved unenforceable in criminal court.
The way I remember it the judge wrote a treatise on how Nigel Wright was the one that whould have been charged
Your recollection is better than mine. I never looked into that one in any real detail, thanks.The way I remember it the judge wrote a treatise on how Nigel Wright was the one that whould have been charged
Mike Duffy - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
On July 17, 2014 Duffy was charged by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with 31 offences.[19] Duffy was acquitted of all charges on April 21, 2016. Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt ruled: "Mr. Neubauer (the Crown prosecutor) stated that Senator Duffy’s actions were driven by deceit, manipulations and carried out in a clandestine manner representing a serious and marked standard expected of a person in Senator Duffy’s position of trust. I find that if one were to substitute the PMO, Nigel Wright and others for Senator Duffy in the aforementioned sentence that you would have a more accurate statement." The judge ruled Duffy had no choice but to list his Prince Edward Island home as his principal residence, as he had been appointed a senator from that province and was constitutionally required to be resident there. Duffy's "free will" had been "overwhelmed" and he had "capitulated" as a result of the PMO's -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office, that is, -- "threatening efforts," the judge said. The Superior Court judge said Duffy had been pressured by senior members of the Prime Minister's staff to admit to improper expense accounts when they were, in fact, legitimate, adding "the real deceit came from Harper's office."[20][21] Robert Fife, now the Globe and Mail's Ottawa bureau chief, won an award for his reporting on the so-called "Senate scandal." On the day Sen. Duffy was acquitted, Fife claimed he had been repeatedly misled by the Harper PMO. He went on to declare the scandal was a "manipulative hoax" by Nigel Wright foisted on the Canadian public. "From the beginning when I broke that story on the $90,000. The Prime Minister’s Office every step of the way lied to me, they lied to Canadians. And inch by inch we were able to scale back and find out one lie after another, one lie after another. And then in the summertime when Nigel Wright and the other key lieutenants in the Prime Minister’s Office were put on the stand, we saw just how this manipulative hoax was put on the Canadian public."[22] Duffy immediately resumed his seat in the Senate and sat as an independent until his retirement.
I can just imagine getting phone calls from the PMO Chief of Staff and trying very hard not tell said office to GTFO.
That’s definitely in the realm of the imaginary. That would be utterly hamfisted obstruction, and would be politically self destructive. Any call from anyone to an investigator is gonna be written about in a notebook and likely discussed at an investigative team meeting with minutes taken. That would not stay secret. I was more referring to the absolute media circus after charges are laid and through trial, or the matter otherwise becomes public.
